


Because

by shelter



Series: Evenings without echoes [7]
Category: Claymore (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Codependence, Despair, F/F, Failed Relationships, Post-Series, Post-breakup, Responsibility, breaking the cycle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-23
Updated: 2020-02-23
Packaged: 2021-02-28 04:41:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22868032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shelter/pseuds/shelter
Summary: Post-series. Audrey thinks: I'm not just another warm body, right?
Relationships: Audrey/ OC, Audrey/Rachel (Claymore), Rachel/ OC
Series: Evenings without echoes [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/489364
Comments: 4
Kudos: 5





	Because

* * *

_"She was the kind of girlfriend God gives you young, so you’ll know loss for the rest of your life."_  
\- Junot Diaz  
  


* * *

On the evening the peasant rebellion marches for Rabona, Audrey’s partner of two years tells her she is leaving her for another woman.

Because Audrey has only assault tactics and deployments on her mind, and because she’s both uncertain and afraid, she simply watches her partner gather her things. The cowrie shells from their seaside trips. The armour from their joint missions. The embroidered gold dresses they shared.

“Please,” Audrey says instead, sitting in front of the fireplace, where her Claymore hangs like a trophy. “Can we talk about this?”

Audrey takes her partner’s hands. She rubs at the ridges at her wrist, the veins flush with exertion. Being taller, Audrey has to lower her head so her partner can tiptoe to kiss her.

Then, she says, “No”. And she leaves Audrey to sit alone as the ashen remains of fire perish in their silent house.

* * *

Because she’s the High Commander for her fellow warriors, Audrey attends an emergency meeting convened by the leaders of Rabona less than five hours later. She takes a seat in front of the windows, hoping the harsh light of dawn will obscure her red eyes.

The leaders all agree: the rebellion needs to be put down, or stopped, whichever is easier. The expeditionary forces are to be assembled, the Royal Guards are to be deployed. Siege engines will be prepared. The leaders decide to begin stockpiling food stores. Then, they look to Audrey.

“Will you call upon your warriors to defend the Holy City?”

Audrey knows they’re waiting for her authority. On her command, she can activate 30 of her sisters living in Rabona and the surrounding towns in two hours. She can call back at least 200 more reserves stationed across the island. She’s done it once, and she can do it again.

She looks at the military commanders, bishops and prominent men of the city in the chamber. Their armour glistening from display, their bellies larded by easy living in the richest city on the island. Long gone are those she fought with, like Galk and Cid, and Father Vincent, the calm voice of reason.

“This is not our fight,” she finally says.

“But Rabona’s very existence is at stake!”

“My sisters and I don’t interfere in human politics.”

“Commander Audrey, think of how many people will die if Rabona falls.”

“Wouldn’t it just be better,” she says, “to ask the rebels what they want instead of fighting them?”

“It doesn’t work this way!” one of the commanders says.

“What are we to do?” goes another. “Walk up to them and ask them?”

“Why not?” she says. “I’ll do it.”

The leaders begin to argue. And Audrey, getting up, sighs. If only people – she included – could simply get their wants understood.

* * *

Because she leaves Rabona under the cover of darkness, Audrey takes no armed escort. Just her Claymore and the old keys for a house she once shared with Rachel. She’s heading for a garrison town near the frontlines. At the gates, Sister Latea sees her off.

“Go in peace,” Sister Latea says.

“There’s no peace here,” Audrey replies.

Sister Latea smiles. She’s always smiling. Audrey finds it annoying. She never asked for any farewell either. So she turns and leaves, heading for the hills. Walking out from Rabona’s buzz and constant traffic feels like emerging from a pressing claustrophobia.

She walks through side roads and shepherds’ paths for the entire night. The further from Rabona she travels, the wilder the landscape gets. The olive groves of the surrounding villages break up into hills and dense woodland. Lonesome houses puff wads of smoke. Distant curtains of clouds open and close to reveal the zebra-striped snow tracks of mountain peaks.

Just as dawn breaks, she reaches her destination: Aley, the garrison town where Rachel chose to be stationed. Smoke from the nearby hills hints that the peasant rebel army is nearer than she expects.

She slips past the sentries, evades the waking garrison. By the time she’s on the familiar cobbled street leading to where she once called home, she ends up thinking of Rachel and her wife, getting ready for the day. And how she, the high commander of all the yoma-touched, is sneaking through the street, running from Rabona and heartbreak.

No turning back, she turns the key into the lock. She’ll surprise them.

It works.

But nobody’s home.

* * *

Because everything is so familiar, she’s drawn to the details. The heavy wooden table they once brought from Rabona. Thyme and herbs at the mirror. Audrey sees a pot of stew on the stove with bones circling at the bottom and knows she just missed Rachel and her wife.

She floats through the house, her hands straying over things from a former life two times over.

Audrey heads to the second floor balcony. At once she notices all of Rachel’s bad habits: the unmade bed, pitcher of wine left by the stairs, the unkempt garden, hair bunched in unswept corners. 

She feels like she’s escaped Rabona and her wife – no former wife – but is revisiting her own history of failed relationships. This time with her former sparring partner.

She draws the curtains and steps out into the sun-flooded balcony. She’s always loved this place, with its view over the trees of the garden and the street below. Low, white buildings run and turn sharply along the street, with the hills rising behind them.

Audrey can vaguely hear the garrison running through their formations. Rachel’s there, with her wife. Audrey knows she probably should be there too.

Instead, she surveys the estate and the street.

And she spots an intruder: someone – no, two people – drop down from the far wall at end of the garden. She can’t see them properly. So she leaps down to the garden, and stalks them through the trees.

The garden is bursting with the aroma of oranges, Rachel’s favourite. So much like her character, Audrey thinks. She never knew if Rachel would be sour, bitter or sweet. Or maybe Audrey just never understood how to appreciate oranges.

The intruders keep to the wall, not bothering to duck in or out of the trees. They’re too sloppy to be assassins. Probably infiltrators from the peasant rebellion, or thieves.

Just before they reach the house, she confronts them.

They’re just kids. Two scrappy kids. She doesn’t even need to draw her Claymore. One turns and runs. The other stands her ground, allows Audrey to come within striking distance. A toss of her long hair, and she gets into fighting stance But Audrey can see she’s scared.

Audrey sighs. “You’re trespassing,” she tells her. “You know what the Rabonan army does to trespassers?”

“No.”

“Get out before I show you.”

The girl blinks. Audrey moves a step forward, and she then runs back where she came. Audrey watches her, then heads inside, barricading herself in her ex-lover’s house.

* * *

Soldiers shouting, babies crying and the whistling of artillery. Audrey wakes. Invasion?

Because she can’t return to sleep, she gets up from the covers, from the comforting bunker of the bed she used to share with Rachel, and tries to shrug off the fantasy of sleep. Shadows from untamed firelight run riot all over the walls, and in the din she can hear someone shouting orders.

From the balcony, she can see that the hills are clear. Smoke rises from the centre of town, not from the garrison. Youths are walking the street with torches, and an assorted melange of weapons: blacksmith hammers, sickles and shepherd’s cowls.

They shout, “Long live the rebellion!”

And, of course, “Death to Rabona!”

Not invasion. An insurrection.

Some of them spot her on the balcony, and now they’re at the door. For a brief moment, she wants them to break down the door and burn down the house. Take something from Rachel for a change, she thinks, I’ve given enough. 

Then, she remembers that she’s the High Commander of all the Silver-Eyed Warriors of the realm.

Because she remembers this, she puts on something for modesty and takes her Claymore to face the troublemakers.

* * *

Because they don’t even manage to break down the door, they scale the outer wall and enter the garden. In the shifting shades of shadow and light, Audrey meets them among the trees.

“Go home!” she tells them. “Leave the fighting to real warriors.”

Uncertain, they rush towards her. With the crook of her elbow, she redirects the force of her attacker’s thrust back on himself. A second one stabs at her with a butcher’s knife, finds air and Audrey connects the flat of her palm to his nose. The third has the energy from his hammer blow rerouted up his entire upper body, sending him spasming to the ground.

As her attackers reassemble, she takes her Claymore, and stabs in into the ground before her.

“You kids should be asleep at this time of the night,” she says.

“Witch!” one of them yells.

She hasn’t heard this insult for a long time. Too long, in fact, that she’d somehow knew it would return.

Before they can attack again, she picks up her sword. They scatter, scrambling up the garden walls. She helps some of them clear the height obstacle with a mild push.

But there’s one left. Audrey senses a presence – human, shifting, anxious – intruding at the very corner of her yoki. When she turns to it, she sees a girl – no, the girl from this morning – pointing at her with a blunt runt of a iron file.

She’s blocking the space between her and the house. Audrey floats two options: disarm or –

“Are you another one?” the girl says.

Kill?

Audrey thinks she’s heard wrongly. She hasn’t had much sleep after all.

“Are you?” she asks again.

“Another what?”

“Another of her lovers?”

Glass smashes and the crunching liquid crash of flames blares in the background. The word – love – is so inappropriate for the occasion that Audrey almost laughs.

“She said he would leave her wife for me,” the girl says. “She was a liar –”

Then Audrey, sleep-deprived as she is, understands.

“And there were others.”

Even when they were together, Audrey knew that Rachel had the tendency to stray. There were many, too many.

Because she knows too: that being in Rachel’s house herself proved that she was probably just another warm body too.

Audrey closes her eyes. She thinks of Rachel, probably in this house just hours before, playing house with her wife. She thinks of her own partner – former partner – and how even though she did everything right, she still left. And she thinks of watching the door of her house, waiting for her, Rachel or someone to walk in – waiting for the door to open until she couldn’t feel any warmth in her legs.

Because she remembers the numbness leeching into her muscles, the cold of her empty house seeping into the flesh of her clenched fingers, Audrey tells the girl:

“Come in. It’s too cold outside.”

* * *

Warm sunlight and the sound of the garrison marching in the streets. Birds calling out to each other in the trees.

Audrey knows she isn’t dreaming. Wind teases the sheer curtains of the room. As she gets up from her blanket on the floor, she sees the girl she invited in last night curled under the sheets and fast asleep in Rachel’s poster bed.

Because she knows how the Rabonan army works, she assumes the garrison has restored control of the town. She senses Rachel, her wife and some other signatures faintly in the vicinity. This means reinforcements from Rabona have arrived, and maybe the army will move out, supported by silver-eyed warriors.

Without her in command.

Audrey warms a pot of water, and she slices oranges from the orchard and overripe apples from her supplies. She brews coffee, the way her wife – ex-wife – would’ve liked it.

She has a heavenly vision of herself in a house of her own, surrounded by the bright face of a wife, and their children.

“Who are you really?”

The girl from last night is standing at the threshold between the dark interior of the house and the bustling, sun-streaked kitchen. She stands with her hands grasping the sharp turn of the wall, her feet pointed to her and not away.

When Audrey pours a mug of coffee, the girl automatically steps forward to claim it. She’s comfortable with the house, used to being served, probably by Rachel.

Audrey doesn’t move. She watches the girl reach for an apple, and she watches her throat move as she bites, crunches and swallows chunks of it. A slender flute of muscles ending in a basin of overhanging collarbones. Her long hair, thin nose, fine ridges stretching from her hands – they remind Audrey of herself.

Outside, the garrison regroups. Rachel and several other warriors outline their own strategies – without her, since word has probably reached them that she’d disappeared overnight. Soon, Audrey knows, they will lead an army to fight peasants from the south and east who have legitimate grievances against the Rabonan elite.

Soon, Audrey knows, if nothing gets done, warriors that used to answer to her will be using their Claymores to shed human blood. Humans they once swore to protect.

“Well?” the girl asks. With a toss of her hair, she edges ever nearer to Audrey with barely-unsheathed impatience.

Audrey knows needs to go. She needs to do what she always does: supress her doubt, believe in the good of others, save the world.

Because that’s what she’s done her entire life, she clears a cloud of hair from her girl’s forehead and says to her:

“Why don’t you tell me about yourself?”

.

.

.

END

**Author's Note:**

> If you've reached this point, thank you for reading!
> 
> I put Claymore characters through a lot of trauma.
> 
> Thank you for reading what's possibly another depressing story. I've had this idea for a while & wanted to develop it, without resorting to fluff or smut. I wanted to explore how hard it is to break away from old, unhealthy habits. Doing so might require the complete destruction of one's character.
> 
> Like Cassandra & Roxanne, I've always felt Claymore has written the perfect manual on toxic relationships. I wanted to explore this idea with Audrey & Rachel, to show the suffocating constraint of habit.
> 
> Only 1 question to ponder:
> 
> 1\. What do you think Audrey is dependent on? The comfort she receives from familiarity with Rachel? The certainty of a warm welcome? Or something else?


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